Paper-Work Heaven Part II

I should have written this on Thursday but I didn't have time to do that, then went away on the weekend so now....

I had two main things left on my list, the first one was "ka3b 3amal", so I went to the place where they do that on Wednesday, only to find that they needed 3 documents; my ID and a copy of it, my college graduation certificate and a copy of it and finally my insurance number. The first two were a piece of cake, the third one was supposed to be so as well according to the nice lady who told me what I needed.( she was really nice, friendly and smiled at me while talking, I almost thought something was just not right) She told me I had to go to the insurance office and just ask for that number. The funny thing though was that she told me I had to come back the next day because they were out of "ka3b 3amal" forms! Huh???

So I went to the insurance guys, went into an office that had a big glass cube with a bunch of employees inside it and some round openings in the glass through which we could talk to the employees. I went to the first one I saw and tried to ask her where I should go exactly to get that number, "Good Morning :)"... no answer...."Excuse me"... nothing, then she turned towards someone next to her and talked to them. So I figured she was not deaf or dumb. "Ma'am"...absolutely nothing.
What bugged me the most was that she was playing the "busy" part by sitting and typing stuff on an almost extinct version of what we used to call a computer way back when we didn't know any better. Honestly, who are you kidding??? If she had been nice enough to look at my ID she would've noticed that I'm a computer science major so who on earth was she kidding??? Not that I expect her to waste her precious typing time on me, but at least respect the citizens who walk by and see you doing that and at least had definitely seen a computer once before at some point of their wretched lives!

In a last attempt to get her attention or at least bug her a bit I bluntly called out "Ya 7aggaa" and still there was nothing from her side so I went ahead and asked someone else who directed me to the queue that i needed to be in.

After standing there for a couple of minutes, (it was just me and another girl and 7 or 8 men) some guy passed by and told me helpfully "why are you standing here? there's a queue for women over there.. go stand there " ( for the egyptians out there reading this and not yet bored, he said "fih taboor lel 7areem oddam! " I totally hate this word, it disgusts me huuuugely :S ugh!

This is one of the very few times that I appreciated discrimination in Egypt. I got the insurance number in 5 minutes instead of an hour and was on my way home. Went the next day and got the ka3b 3amal thing in 5 minutes as well. It was a stupid piece of paper that looked like an ugly receipt. What strange things they ask for .

Now I was done except for the very last thing that I had to get from the previous job: a document called form 6 that is like a release of obligations... just a piece of paper saying that I no longer work for them. It's supposed to be the simplest thing and guess what! I'll have it after one month because the manager says so. No other reason than that mister big boss says "I'll give it to you after one month of leaving us" Okaay! whatever makes you feel good (you CRAZY *#*&%@&#**#*#)

And I'm done! Yaaaaaaay!!!!!